It’s Official: The World Had Finally Lost its Mind Over Michael Jackson July 31, 2009

When Michael Jackson died, like the rest of America and probably the whole world, I grieved. For maybe the first week or two. But, unfortunately, the media continues to plague us with the latest news surrounding him and his death. Enough’s enough already. He’s dead; he’s not coming back; can we all please shut up about him already? It’s bad enough all this legal crap over custody and belongings is being so publicized (personally, I think that legal proceeding should really be the sole concerns of those directly involved, regardless of their level of fame), and that most of us seem to neglect the fact that a great deal of the man’s mourners (alas – myself included) didn’t have a kind thing to say about him (except maybe the occasional indulgent comment on his talent) for years before his death. But two things I just happened to catch on NBC yesterday revealed just how much sanity Jacko’s death has robbed the public of. Yesterday morning, right after waking up, I turned on The Today Show and saw one of the hosts interviewing a guest who was…Michael Jackson’s personal cook?! What the fudge, people?! It astounds me that people would actually care about what the man ate – especially enough to want to know the recipes so they could fix up their own Michael Jackson meals. I mean, what, do they think – his diet was made up of some kind of pop superstar ambrosia? That if you eat the same food Jacko ate when he was alive, that you’ll somehow become some monarch of pop or something? And anyway, I don’t know about you, but I’d really rather not intentionally cook myself a meal favored by someone who died of a heart attack. I mean, after Elvis died, do you think people clamored over each other for peanut-butter-and-bacon sandwiches?

After getting over my initial horror from The Today Show, I was not relieved of Michael Jackson-fueled stupidity for long. That night, I turned on NBC again and watched some of the nightly news before The Tonight Show With Conan O’ Brien came on. One of the news stories involved some fancy-schmancy diamond company which – on top of stripping diamonds of all the wonder and rarity they’re valued for by apparently making diamonds synthetically through some sort of high-tech carbon-pressurizing process – have acquired bits of Mr. Jackson’s hair and are planning on making diamonds out of it. Once again, what the fudge?! At the end of the day, hair – no matter whose head it’s been on – is just hair. Michael Jackson’s hair doesn’t contain any more mystical powers (just more expensive styling products) than mine does – where’s my hair-diamond, huh? And anyway, don’t these people realize that they’re changing the very structure of Jacko’s hair beyond recognition? How can we really tell that this diamond is made of his or anyone else’s hair? No, if some of the King of Pop’s hair is left over from before his death, it should be kept in its natural state where it belongs: in some Hard Rock Café, somewhere in between an Alice Cooper bustier and a collection of Monkees lunchboxes from the late sixties (note: I’ve been to many a Hard Rock Café, but I don’t know of any where either of these things exist, let alone both of them, let alone within close proximity of each other. The point is that these are both objects that could conceivably be found in a HRC, so work with me here. It’s a hypothetical conjecture). And if I hear or see one more extraneous news item related to Michael Jackson within the next few months (which undoubtedly I will), I might have to throw something hard and possibly damage-inducing at the TV or radio or whatever other media may administer this information. I probably won’t, of course, but I’ll have vivid fantasies of it.